In a game that had more flags than a United Nations convention, the Dallas Cowboys still managed to find some sort of groove and wrangle the New York Giants. In a frustrating spectacle that left Giants fans laughing, crying, and possibly questioning their life choices, Dak Prescott notched his 13th win over Big Blue, proving that he already owns more contested real estate in New York than Donald Trump. After dropping two in a row, Prescott had himself a solid get-right outing, going 22 for 27, with 221 yards and 2 touchdowns. Perhaps the Giants should start calling him “Dad Prescott.” Let’s dive into this rodeo, shall we?
Micah Parsons May Be a Prophet
Micah Parsons is fast becoming one of our faves. Not only are his math and philosophy skills outstanding [Micah Parsons Offers Mathematical Proof That The Patriots Are Just As Good As The 49ers], he’s just entertaining as hell. Before the game, Parsons expressed concern prior to this match-up that the Cowboys were letting themselves “get smacked in the face.” He also worried that his teammates were trying too hard and stated that he also wasn’t sure if any of his locker room pep talks were sinking in. “Everyone’s nodding their head like they all agree…but its not happening out on the field,” he lamented earlier in the week. Fortunately for the Cowboys, this game was ultimately about the Giants’ ongoing red zone face-planting than the Cowboys smacked faces. The Dallas defense also finally showed up, presumably because they got tired of Parsons’ constant yapping about them to the press. We sure hope he keeps it up, at any rate.
Daniel Jones: The Human Pinball
On the other side of the field, poor Daniel Jones was bouncing around like a pinball. He went 29 of 40 for 281 yards and 0 touchdowns, in a performance that seemed so close but, yet, so far. It won’t convince his haters that he should stay, but Jones had a decent outing and generally acquitted himself well, save for one enormous exception in the games final thirty seconds. He simply could not find the end zone at all in this outing. Maybe he thought completing passes to his own team was too mainstream? We are pretty sure that this is not the kind of edginess that the Giants are looking for; he was given an opportunity to prove himself worthy of the starting job but, once again, he just could not drag his team across the finish line. We sincerely hope nobody finds out where he’s parking his car these days.
The (Almost) Great Escape… Almost
In a twist worthy of Houdini, NFL kicking leader Brandon Aubrey finally missed one, giving the Giants the ball back on their own 41 with 28 seconds left in the game. A completion would likely have put the game away completely, but the rare miss gave the Giants hope that Danny Dimes might be able to cobble together a game-winning drive. It was like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat, only to have the rabbit immediately leap onto the magician’s face, bite his nose off, and hop away. Alas, Jones could not capitalize on Aubrey’s generosity and threw an interception just outside the end zone, proving that such escape acts are still the sole purview of more successful quarterbacks.
It Starts…The Injury Conga Line
Micah Parsons, Trevon Diggs, and Demarcus Lawrence all left the game with injuries. Taking things from bad to worse, rookie Malik Nabers left the game in the 4th quarter with a concussion. Incredibly, we are already almost a quarter of the way through the season, and if injuries are already piling up for the Cowboys, it does not bode well for their ability to sustain success for the rest of the year. Already, they have stumbled out of the gate and are looking rustier than anyone predicted. If their depth chart fails them before they can put their veterans back on the field, it will be yet another lost year for the ‘Boys in (Light) Blue.
Rookie Sensation vs. Veteran Frustration
Speaking of Malik Nabers, the rookie had a good game with 115 yards on 12 receptions. Meanwhile, veteran receiver CeeDee Lamb racked up 98 yards and a touchdown. It was a little like watching a student outperform his teacher, except the teacher still gets paid more and doesn’t have to live in a dorm. All jokes aside, Lamb had a good game, but it was almost tragic to see young Nabers’s heroic efforts go to waste. The kid’s got talent, y’all.
Al Michaels: The Flag Whisperer
Poor Al Michaels was notably irritated by all the penalty flags, and we don’t blame him. At one point, it looked like the refs were trying to recreate the yellow brick road from “The Wizard of Oz.” Maybe they thought Michaels needed to spice up his color commentary, but all it did was give Al the opportunity to point out that, with all the flags, it was difficult for the teams to get into a rhythm. We were reminded of how the flow of soccer games are interrupted when teams commit themselves to the Flop. This felt similar; with all the laundry out on the field, Michaels pointed out, it interrupted the flow of the game to a noticeably annoying degree. Particularly when the penalties simply offset, making the interruption pointless. If the NFL is actually concerned with the optics of refs missing penalties, they should not allow offsetting penalties to be called on the field during games. It might make sense to have a rules/penalty analyst available to relay that information to the commentators and viewers. Couldn’t they just put that info up on the jumbotron? There’s got to be another way, and we are confident that the NFL will manage to make it worse before they make it better.
When’s The Next Rodeo?
Both teams play again on October 6th: Cowboys at Pittsburgh and Giants at Seattle. Was this a course correct for the Cowboys, or will they face-plant? Will the Giants finally remember how to score touchdowns, or will they continue to treat the end zone like a foreign country? We know we’re staying tuned next Sunday. Can Dak can pull another rabbit out of a hat? All we know is that this was a hard fought victory, and Geno Smith won’t be as easy to subdue as Daniel Jones.
[Photo of Dak Prescott courtesy of Keith Allison: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dak_prescott_2016.jpg#:~:text=original%3A%20Keith%20Allisonderivative%3A%20Diddykong1130%2C%20CC%20BY%2DSA%202.0%20%3Chttps%3A//creativecommons.org/licenses/by%2Dsa/2.0%3E%2C%20via%20Wikimedia%20Commons]